Here, you are urged and encouraged to run your mouths about something important.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Doug Schoen: The Democrat Canary

Doug Schoen is considered to be a moderate Democrat, although his support for Hillary Clinton might draw the moderate label into question. Nonetheless, he has a stark warning for the Democratic Party and that warning is that it should distance itself from the Occupy Wall Street protests. Additionally, Schoen's people actually did some polling research on the protesters and found that one third of them support violence (are you listening Chris Christie?). If Schoen is right, which I believe he is, Obama's decision to double-down on his Alinsky-inspired ideology is only going to further alienate the wide swath of voters who disagree with OWS. In this regard, Obama is like a child with matches sitting next to the living room curtains.

Thus Occupy Wall Street is a group of engaged progressives who are disillusioned with the capitalist system and have a distinct activist orientation. Among the general public, by contrast, 41% of Americans self-identify as conservative, 36% as moderate, and only 21% as liberal. That's why the Obama-Pelosi embrace of the movement could prove catastrophic for their party.

In 1970, aligning too closely with the antiwar movement hurt Democrats in the midterm election, when many middle-class and working-class Americans ended up supporting hawkish candidates who condemned student disruptions. While that 1970 election should have been a sweep against the first-term Nixon administration, it was instead one of only four midterm elections since 1938 when the president's party didn't lose seats.

With the Democratic Party on the defensive throughout the 1970 campaign, liberal Democrats were only able to win on Election Day by distancing themselves from the student protest movement. So Adlai Stevenson III pinned an American flag to his lapel, appointed Chicago Seven prosecutor Thomas Foran chairman of his Citizen's Committee, and emphasized "law and order"—a tactic then employed by Ted Kennedy, who denounced the student protesters as "campus commandos" who must be repudiated, "especially by those who may share their goals."

After his column appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Schoen appeared on Fox Business with Stuart Varney: